Hahn’s LAX Plan Finally Lands for First Votes

With the first votes on the long-delayed modernization of Los Angeles International Airport expected tonight, Mayor James K. Hahn has been celebrating what he called a “tremendous achievement.”

But though Hahn has succeeded in pushing an airport overhaul further than his predecessors, the plan before airport and planning commissioners leaves unsettled many crucial questions, including whether it would make the airport more secure.

Many involved in the debate say the uncertainty is a consequence of the way Hahn has presided over the city’s largest public works project since he introduced his proposal in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“It’s been a bad process and a bad result,” said Councilman Jack Weiss, who has been pushing the mayor for months to take a closer look at the security issue.

For more than two years, Hahn refused to negotiate with critics of his controversial $9-billion plan. He did not attend numerous meetings with community leaders.

For the campaign to win public support, he entrusted two lieutenants whose brusque manner alienated key interest groups and other civic leaders. And he ignored repeated warnings from allies that he would have to compromise.

Not until he was faced with the imminent collapse of his plan did Hahn give in.

Under an agreement reached last week with Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who represents the airport area, Hahn agreed to defer consideration of a remote check-in facility at Manchester Square that is the centerpiece of his plan. Subject to further analysis, it may never be built.

The more popular projects, including a new rental car complex and a tram connecting terminals and other airport facilities, would be built first.

Tonight, airport and planning commissioners will vote separately on the mayor’s plan. Both bodies will be asked to approve the proposal, and each will consider various planning documents. Whatever action the commissioners take, the final decisions rest with the City Council and, ultimately, the Federal Aviation Administration. The votes will be the first time any public agency has reviewed a modernization plan for LAX in 23 years.

Hahn last week hailed that progress as historic.

“This thing has gone further than any previous incarnation of airport modernization,” the mayor said. “That point seems to be missed by a lot of people who seem to think that it is stalled, or hasn’t gone anywhere, or is dead in the water.”

But many civic and business leaders said the LAX modernization, 15 years and $126 million in the making, could be much further along had Hahn not stonewalled negotiations for more than two years.

Because the compromise came at the 11th hour, key questions remain.

Significant changes to Hahn’s proposal could force the city to redo multimillion-dollar noise, air pollution and traffic studies if opponents successfully sue or the Federal Aviation Administration rejects the compromise plan.

And city leaders are still waiting for the results of a comprehensive analysis of the best way to protect the world’s fifth-busiest airport from a terrorist attack.

Critics say some of this uncertainty could have been avoided.

“It would have been better to include us in the process much earlier,” said Kelley Brown, a veteran airline consultant who represents carriers at LAX.

In the weeks and months after the terrorist attacks, Hahn promised vigorous leadership to deliver an airport designed to better protect travelers.

“The tragic events of Sept. 11 showed us our nation’s aviation system continues to be a vulnerable target,” Hahn told an October 2001 hearing on the airport’s modernization. “Those events have caused me to focus my attention first and foremost on the changes that must be undertaken immediately to ensure safe and secure operations at LAX.”

But by the time Hahn unveiled his LAX plan nine months later, there were already signs that his attention was not so focused.

The mayor made no mention of it in his first two State of the City addresses.

Throughout 2002 and 2003, he left the task of selling his LAX plan to others. Of 72 airport briefings to community leaders, business groups and elected officials between June 11, 2002, and March 7, 2003, Hahn was scheduled to speak at only three.

Miscikowski said the mayor discussed the issue with her on only a few occasions.

“I can count them on one hand,” she said.

The mayor left most of the communication to Airport Commission President Ted Stein, a Valley developer and lawyer known for his aggressive style, and Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards, a former campaign worker with no experience in aviation policy.

They were poor choices, said many community and business leaders who tried to work with the mayor’s office on the modernization plan.

Stein and Edwards held more than 100 meetings with community leaders, business groups and airlines, but they never appeared open to altering the plan, according to interviews with more than a dozen people involved.

“The plan was always presented, at least to us, as a take-it-or-leave-it, all-or-nothing approach,” said Lee Harrington, president of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., an influential group that represents a range of businesses.

After a consortium of airlines wrote to airport officials with concerns about Hahn’s plan in the summer of 2002, Stein announced that the plan to demolish three existing terminals and build the check-in facility was “not negotiable.”

The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce became so frustrated with Stein and Edwards that its leaders demanded meetings with other city officials, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

The chamber ultimately voted to give the plan only a lukewarm endorsement and recommended that a final decision on the check-in center be deferred.

The Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., which represents businesses in the San Fernando Valley, sought meetings with members of Hahn’s administration before voting on the plan, but were rebuffed. The group decided to oppose the plan.

“It seems to me you can always get further by talking and listening,” said San Fernando Valley businessman David Grannis, who co-wrote the association’s official comments on the mayor’s plan.

“It seemed like a closed process.”

In the two years that Hahn has sought support for his plan, there have been ample warnings of trouble.

Many of the mayor’s allies said they complained to him privately about Stein and Edwards. Others said they pressed him to accept compromises.

But Hahn wouldn’t budge.

When the Rand Corp. concluded that the new check-in center would make passengers more vulnerable to attack by concentrating them in one place, Hahn’s office commissioned a quick study that purported to show otherwise. The mayor has since acknowledged that more study of the issue is needed.

And while top city officials warned that Hahn’s plan did not have the votes in the 15-member City Council to win passage, the mayor’s office released a series of news releases heralding new endorsements as part of a “growing coalition of support.”

Hahn’s plan did secure several major endorsements: from labor unions, the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Sheriff Lee Baca, who defended the security advantages. Rounding out what the mayor’s office characterized as a “coalition” were such groups as the Los Angeles Korean Festival Foundation and the Historic Cultural Neighborhood Council.

The plan was never endorsed by Rep. Jane Harman, the Venice Democrat who represents the airport area. And it’s not even close to having majority support from the City Council.

Only this spring, when council members warned publicly that the plan was on life support, did the mayor indicate a willingness to make concessions.

Edwards and Stein, whose fundraising entangled them in the ongoing criminal probes of city contracting, left the Hahn administration in March and April, easing tensions between the mayor’s office and its critics.

The mayor personally reached out to Miscikowski, one of his toughest critics.

Last month, with Miscikowski and another council member threatening to order a comprehensive security study of the LAX modernization, Hahn agreed to a more exacting study.

Friday, he agreed to defer a final decision on the Manchester Square project.

“We’re at the point that we can move forward,” the mayor said last week. “I’m glad that we’ve built the consensus to do that.”

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Planning for LAX

March 1989: Los Angeles City Council votes to initiate planning for growth of Los Angeles International Airport.

January 1995: Board of Airport Commissioners awards first contracts for master planning of LAX modernization.

January 2001: Mayor Richard Riordan unveils plans for a massive expansion of LAX to increase passenger capacity.

October 2001: After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mayor James K. Hahn directs airport officials to develop a new plan to improve security and limit potential growth.

July 2002: Hahn unveils current plan, known as Alternative D, which, among other projects, would demolish three terminals and build a new remote check-in center.

May 2004: With Hahn’s proposal under fire and facing defeat before the City Council, Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski offers a compromise plan to defer approval of the controversial remote check-in proposal.

June 2004: Hahn reaches agreement with Miscikowski on the compromise plan.

Los Angeles Times